Classic horror maven director Stuart Gordon’s
(“Re-Animator”/“From
Beyond”) adaptation of David Mamet’s unsuccessful 1982
Off Broadway
one-act
play about a discontented mild-mannered stuffy nebbish
lower-echelon
corporation
executive Edmond Burke (William H. Macy), who walks
out on his wife and
takes a walk on the wild side during his middle-age
crisis. Gordon,
a longtime Mamet supporter (worked together at
Chicago's Organic
Theater
Company), is of no help in presenting Mamet's rant,
leaving it all
sizzle
and no substance in its same play form. It's
all about
Mamet-speak
tirades regarding Angry White Males, who are
Reaganites in rebellion
against
their empty lives, their failed civilized world and
the upstart blacks.
The trouble is that the satire on middle-class angst
has little bite
and
is sophomoric. It can be enjoyed mainly by those who
just love
Mamet-ese,
no matter the story line's failings.

New York City executive Edmond Burke is on his way
home
from work
when he stops to have a tarot card reading and is
told, "You are not
where
you belong." At home, Edmond tells his longtime wife
(Rebecca Pidgeon)
he's leaving for good because he doesn't love her and
he first stops
off
at a bar for a few drinks. There he meets a
well-dressed stranger (Joe
Mantegna) who appears to empathize with his plight and
lays on him his
trip against blacks. He also lays on him a card of a
nearby exotic sex
club, telling the confused man he needs to get laid.
Edmond visits the
club in the Times Square area (filmed in Los Angeles)
and gets bounced
over arguing about the high price of drinks. He then
goes on a
free-fall
as he walks through an urban hell and is shocked to
discover that sex
clubs,
peep shows, prostitutes and three-card monte games in
the street are
all
hustles. The uptight square is not even a tourist, but
thinks like one
(or, I should say the playwright thinks like one).

After our contemptuous hero goes through an urban
nightmare
and is
swindled, robbed and beaten, he finds his inner voice
and the strength
to beat a black pimp mugger nearly to death with his
newly purchased
knife
(a survival substitute for his briefcase) and spews
out racist remarks.
With his demonic victory he finds the macho courage to
screw a young
waitress
and aspiring actress (Julia Stiles), but when she
freaks out as he goes
into a revelation rant he slashes her to death. The
lost soul then
seeks
spiritual redemption at a mission church, only to
somehow wind up in
prison
where he becomes the bitch to his muscular black
cellmate (Bokeem
Woodbine).
It unconvincingly descends into a Jean Genet-like
allegory, without
ever
getting to any sensible explanation or insight into
why the main
character
let himself fall so far.

None of it rings true for even a NYC second, even as
it
calls everyone
out, black or white, as a racist or a sleaze or a
failure. It clamors
to
be an odd spiritual journey of a failed man trying to
find God and his
own path in the world, but lacks any great vision to
pull off its aims
except to make us possibly squirm at seeing how such a
nerd (who not
only
relates to the author and the protagonist, but to the
male white
viewer)
comes to a boil.